It was about two in the morning 365 days ago after another long night as a DP sports editor. I was about ready to leave the office when I got an interesting phone call from another editor.
He told me that he had heard from a friend of his that his football-player roommate was abruptly summoned somewhere, and the roommate returned in tears.
I didn't quite know what to do about it, other than maybe call HUP and see if they would tell me if a football player was in the hospital, but that seemed like a needle in a haystack.
So I went to sleep without thinking about it again.
The next morning, I got an e-mail from someone in the Athletic Communications department, telling me that football practice was cancelled Tuesday afternoon and that I would have to do my scheduled interviews another time.
Being an enterprising journalist, I called the athletic department and asked if I could at least speak with coach Al Bagnoli if the players weren't available. I was told no, and then asked why.
The answer I was given went something along the lines of:
"You'll find out why soon enough."
So our staff went to work trying to ascertain what happened, which we eventually did later in the day - senior running back Kyle Ambrogi had taken his own life the night before in his home in nearby Havertown, Pa.
That day, and the next week, was one of my most harrowing as an editor.
Aside from the personal information and details that we had to both investigate and then publish, I had to make what was easily my most difficult decision as editor - should we call the Ambrogis on Tuesday afternoon?
After much heated deliberation, I decided not to call the family until later in the week. I took a great deal of criticism for it, but I still think that it was the right thing to do.
But even when the week was done, concluding with a blowout win over Columbia in New York the following Saturday, the specter of Ambrogi's death haunted the team the rest of the year.
After winning another game (over Yale) on basically adrenaline and emotion, Penn fell apart completely in the last month of the season, losing to Brown, Princeton, Harvard and Columbia.
And while we in media kept alluding to Ambrogi's death as a big reason for the team's downfall, it seemed like no one dared to say it out loud. We all said things like "we don't know how something like that might affect a team."
Fast-forwarding a year, I can tell you from day one that this season is all about wiping the painful memories of last year away.
The helmet decals of Ambrogi's number 31 are gone. That number was reissued this year, after a brief discussion about retiring it. And Bagnoli stressed in the preseason that he was all about getting his team off to a fresh start.
So far this year, the only reminder of Kyle Ambrogi is his younger brother Greg, a defensive back. And it is certainly nice to see that Greg Ambrogi is having more of an impact on the field this season and has been able to continue playing football after the trauma he endured one year ago.
And Kyle Ambrogi's death, which dominated last season's team, has barely been touched upon this year, especially once the year got started.
But on this first anniversary of his death, we should take a moment to remember the young man who is not around to help his former teammates anymore, and the lessons that his death taught everyone at Penn, no matter your position or relationship to him.
Josh Hirsch is a senior urban studies major from Roslyn, N.Y., and is former Senior Sports Editor of The Daily Pennsylvanian. His e-mail address is jjhirsch@sas.upenn.edu.
